


There is a Roadway, Muddy and Foxgloved

by Cinderscream



Series: kat does sledgefu week 2020 [4]
Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Elements of Horror, M/M, i know nothing about louisiana despite having been there so sorry for inaccuracies, its souther gothic babyyyy, snafu is slightly unsettling, um lots of gore that happens in dreams, unspecified time because time is an illusion and i have no concept of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25573024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinderscream/pseuds/Cinderscream
Summary: Three days in Louisiana
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Series: kat does sledgefu week 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860643
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11
Collections: Sledgefu Week 2020





	There is a Roadway, Muddy and Foxgloved

**Author's Note:**

> boy when I say I rushed to get this done today sdklghhgh  
> It's not my best but i hope its still enjoyable.

The house looms, despite being a small, squat thing, seemingly on the verge of sinking into the swamp, muddy water licking at its foundation. Sledge stares at it, a frown twisting his mouth, glancing around in desperation and wondering how the fuck he got here, then back at the rotted, pockmarked face of the house he’d somehow managed to make his way in his depressing attempt to ge back to his hotel through the winding, maze-like streets of New Orleans.

He’s supposed to be in Louisiana with his father, who’d come to visit an ailing friend in the hope of being able to help him (his father being a doctor), and Sledge, not wanting to a third wheel, having never met the man, had asked for permission to go on a walk on his own. His father had been fine with it, as long as Sledge was sure he could find his way back to the hotel, and Sledge feels like something of a fool now, tripping over protruding tree roots and squelching mud and not having a clue as to how he’s managed to get himself so lost. 

Somewhere behind the swathe of clouds, the sun sinks lower in the sky, dusk in the gathering darkness that rainclouds alone cannot cause. Great, he thinks, nervous itching at the back of his neck. He feels watched, but there’s no one around. 

The Louisiana humidity draws sheens of sweat on his forehead in a way that the dry heat of Alabama isn’t able to, making the air sticky and thick, his skin itching from mosquito bites, but unable to bring his shirtsleeves down for fear of boiling. There’s a growing collection of welts on his arms from where he’s been bitten that he scratched and he hopes to god that this foolhardy trip is worth it, that whoever lives here ( _if_ anyone lives here) will be kind enough to guide him back into town. He feels wary, the fine hairs of his arm prickling up with a strange alertness, his belly twisting itself in knots with a dread he does not understand. His ears seem to perk at every little noise and Eugene wonders if it would be better if he bypassed this house, kept looking until the unease trickles away. 

The weather seems to have different ideas because above him, the sky grumbles unhappily, thick, cottony gray clouds flashing and sparking, and the smell of petrichor does nothing but strengthen the musky odor of the swamp, cloudy brown water squeaking wetly beneath the expensive leather of his boots. Sledge swallows, debating whether he could make the run through the dilapidated part of the city and somehow find his way to the safety of his pricey hotel before the downpour begins, and gets his answer a moment later when a streak of lightning erupts from the sky, lighting everything in yellow-blue with its reaching, jagged hands before heralding a brutal sheet of rain. 

“Shit, shit  _ shit _ ,” Sledge hisses, running up to the door, nearly falling as every step is sucked into the wet earth and released with a sticky  _ plop _ . 

He freezes when his hand grasps the cold metal of the doorknob, ice and electricity shocking their way down his spine, images he doesn’t understand flashing in his peripheral, green eyes, a splash of scarlet, the black brush of a crow’s feather, and as abruptly as they appear, they’re gone, leaving him gasping for breath and staring blankly at the door, the rain soaking past his clothes, into his skin and seeping into his bones, cold at first, and then terribly numb. It seems… an impossibly long time before he can move again, splinters crowding on the hand he had placed on the seedy wood of the door, his heart beating too loud in his ears- not pounding, too slow, not frenetic enough to be pounding, but it feels too large for his chest, and Sledge wonders that if he were to open his mouth, one of the valves might spill out and pump blood into swamp, feeding its shadows with Sledge’s irregular pulse. 

The door opens. Sledge doesn’t remember having knocked.

Sledge is unrooted from the spot as it swings inwards, the sickly yellow glow from within and the stifling scent of incense breaking him from whatever trance he’d fallen into upon touching the doorknob. He chokes in a breath, wondering when his lungs had stopped dragging in air. His legs shake, gelatinous and weak, his vision oddly blurred and he doesn’t have it in him to protest when he’s pushed to sit on the spongy cushions of an old couch, something heavy draped around his shoulders while another something, warm and sweet smelling, is pushed into his hands. 

“Well who could you be?” muses a soft, drawling voice. When Sledge feels less like he’s about to disintegrate into the wind and more like a solid person again, kind of, he looks up to catch the vacant eyes of another boy.  _ Green eyes _ . 

“Eugene Sledge”, he answers without thinking, the name slipping from his tongue as if it’d been snatched from his hand, squinting at the boy leaning against one of the blinded windows. He hardly looks a year older than Sledge, if that, and Sledge wonders what might be wrong with him, that makes Sledge feel like an instinct under a microscope, butterfly wings pinned beneath a glass barrier while those foggy eyes drink in the pieces of his soul. 

The other boy- young man, really- is a bit on the small side, leaner than Sledge, bonier, which he attributes to the obvious fact that he’s poor, his hungry face dominated by his large pale eyes, and Sledge’s are drawn to his mouth, pouty, pink and generous. There’s a strength to him too, something coiled just beneath his scrawny little chest that makes Sledge think of a viper poised to strike, and Sledge imagines him slithering through the ranks of an enemy army, ka-bar sheathed in his sleeve, unseen until it’s too late. He’s beautiful, which should be in opposition to his surroundings, but he fits into them the way a tiger fits into the jungle, a danger all his own lingering beneath the veil of his skin. 

If anyone sticks out, it’s Sledge, too soft and too pale to fit properly, a puzzle piece lost in the wrong set, where Merriel simply clicks, a smaller piece of a picture that Sledge cannot fully see. 

“You wanna tell me what you’re doin’ in my bayou, boy?” the man asks, and though there’s a lazy smile curled on his face, he sounds accusatory, lip curled up just enough to give the impression of a snarl. 

“I was lost”, Sledge says defensively, brows furrowing and mouth pulling down into a frown, bristling at the insulation that he’s trespassed in person when it should be clear that he doesn’t even want to be here in the first place. “This place is kind of a maze”, he adds hotly. 

The man’s eyebrows reach for his hairline, amusement flickering in the handsome planes of his hunger panged face, arms crossing across his chest as he leans back against the wall. 

“Wouldn’t really know about all that, cher, I’m blind”, he says with a smirk that makes Sledge’s rare temper blare hot and angry until his words fully register. 

He starts shaking his head and taking a closer look at the man’s eyes, and finds that though they don’t seem to be clouded or disfigured, they’re not actually  _ looking _ at him. They’re focused somewhere just to the side of him, though maybe not so much focused as they’re simply directed there with little thought to what they might actually be pointed at. 

“Sorry”, Sledge says with a grimace, to which the man merely shrugs. 

“Listen, I just wanted to maybe get some direction back into the city, I don’t know where I  _ am _ , I’m not even from here”, he says, frustration bubbling up in the pit of his stomach, because this isn’t how he meant for his day to go, soaked and sweat, bitten half to death by mosquitos and in a house in a part of town that he hadn’t known existent. The rain outside makes the house shudder, old rotten wood creaking in effort to hold itself up, and Eugene shivers, the scrutiny of the man’s eyes feeling like scalpels and Eugene has to consciously fight the urge squirm, the fact that they’re sightless slipping from his mind every time the man shifts and makes direct contact with Eugene’s gaze. 

The man doesn’t look very sympathetic. 

“Maybe you shoulda thought of that before you wandered into the bayou. Sure a gentleman such as yourself would recognize the difference between the city and the wetlands”, he mocks, the honey drawl of his accent twisting the words into cruel points. Eugene scowls, his patience run thin, wishing there was a way to get back at this assholeish man without seeming like a dick himself. 

“I’ll get out if you show me out”, Eugene grumbles, irritated and only just keeping himself from growing snappish though the mounting anger tingest his tone. 

The man tilts his head, humming softly before sighing deeply, dropping his arms from around his torso and wiping a hand down his face. 

“Fair enough. I’ll help you get back to your hotel”, the man sighs, clearly inconvenienced by the whole thing. Sledge would tell him to fuck off if he had any idea how to get back himself. 

“How’d you know I’m staying at a hotel and not staying with someone in town?” Sledge asks, leaning back and watching as the man navigates into a different room, hands occasionally coming up to orient himself on a piece of furniture but never once straying off his path. He comes back with a pair of muddy boots, pulling them on and managing to balance on one foot as he does. 

“Do you have anyone that you’re staying with while you’re here?” The man asks in response to Sledge’s question. 

“... No”, Sledge says, and the man waves a hand at him as if to say  _ there you go _ . 

He’s surprised when the man loops his arm with his, a shiver running up his spine like an electric shock when his hand brushes against his wrist and Sledge’s mouth feels very dry all of a sudden, mute while they head out the door, the man guiding him out. 

“Oh, I didn’t get your name”, Sledge says as they head out into the swamp, waving away flies that don’t bother with the man, noting curiously that the rain’s stopped in the few minutes he’d been inside. It’d been a quick flash more than anything. Everything is exponentially wetter though, and the leaves shiver heavily in the rain, dripping little puddles of rain into Eugene’s hair and and Merriell grumbles every time the water drops on him, shivering its cold chill, but still not pulling the sleeves of his shirt down either because the humidity cooks him almost as much as it cooks Sledge, though he seems far more accustomed to it. He isn’t nearly so marinated in sweat either, breezing through the puddles that Sledge has no doubt he would have eventually tripped into had he been alone. 

The man smiles, and for some reason, Sledge feels the same tingling glide up his arms as when the door opened. 

“My name’s Merriell”, says Merriell, ushering him through the bayou. It's not proper dark out, but close to it and despite the humid heat, Sledge feels a shiver crawl up his spine once they head deeper through the wetland, the bayou quietly snapping at him that he's not wanted. He doesn’t know how he made it this far without noticing, nor does he know when it had gotten so late, swearing that the sun had gleamed at him from its midday position until the clouds had gathered up to hide its face from him, and he wonders if maybe the shadows of the upcoming rainstorm had hidden the passive of time from him. 

The walk back is slow and jittery and the whole time, Sledge feels as if he is being watched. The streets seem empty when they hit them, and he knows that Merriell cannot see, so he doesn’t know what it is that might see him, the eyes that linger in his peripheral disappearing when he turns to try and look at them, and he clings a little tighter to his guide, squeezing the arm looped around his. 

“What’s got you so spooked, cher? The city haunts ain’t interested in  _ you _ ”, Merriell says, pulling away for a moment to light himself a cigarette (and Sledge’s eyes catch on the bird engraved onto his lighter, a crow etched in silver, it’s beady eyes catching the reflection of the pale plume of fire, and when he looks up at Merriell, he finds that his eyes have caught it too, as if it were something internal looking out rather than a reflection. 

“I don’t know what you mean”, Sledge says flatly. “The place is just kinda creepy, nothin’ more to it.”

Merriell does that thing where he looks at him, not straight on but slightly to the left and Eugene is tempted to turn away because his is a potent poison and something about it makes Sledge feel all queasy, something dark and unfathomable in the silvery-green depths of them, like trying to make sense of the depth of the ocean. Sledge doesn’t look away, because he either looks at Merriell and his strange eyes that swallow everything and retain nothing, or eyeing the shadowy corner of empty streets that glower at him, unfriendly and unwelcoming in the growing starlight, the sunset tinging everything in bloody, freshblood red.

“S’always more to it, cher. If you can’t see it, it don’t concern you”, Merriell responds, and his voice is soft now, honey accent dripping quietly from mouth as he links their arms again, steps padding quietly through the hollow streets, and Eugene wonders how he does it when his every movement sounds so loud and clumsy, eyes watching them both from darkened windows and the shadow of night stretching until the only splotches of color are whatever the blinking streetlights shine their yellow light on to. Merriell doesn’t go into the streetlights, and Eugene would guide him to one if he weren’t so afraid of pulling him off his path. 

“Stay in your little hotel and the little cute restaurants they got around here, ain’t no reason for you to show up in my bayou again”, Merriell says what feels like a lifetime later, and when Eugene blinks, he finds that they’re in front of his hotel, the oppressive hands of the night not so prevalent here, the stars a little faded and the sky shaded in dark navy blue rather than velvet pitch black. 

“Thanks, but how’d you know where I-” Sledge cuts himself off short. He’s alone under the moon’s pale light, and he doesn’t know if Merriell had ever been there. 

…

His father isn’t waiting for him at the hotel, and he finds a note on the desk that reads,  _ stayed with my friend, I’ll be here for the rest of the weekend. Enjoy having the room to yourself, Gene _ , in his father’s loopy script, just a little messier than usual. He must have been in a rush, he thinks. 

He feels a little guilty about not having to face his father, a little too exhausted to deal with his questioning eyes, wondering why he’d been all out night when he’d only meant to go on a quick walk. Sledge doesn’t even know if Merriell was real, feels as he had imagined the man because that would honestly make the most sense. A young man living alone in the bayou, blind? Right, he scoffs mentally, then winces, thinking of the face his father would pull at his judgement. 

Perhaps he shouldn’t think so harshly of him, Merriell, if he’d been real,  _ did _ help him get back to his hotel though he had every right to kick Sledge back out of his house to get lost and die in the jaws of a hungry gator if he so wanted. His head aches. 

“Fuck it, I’m going to bed”, he mutters to himself, swiping his hands down his face and yawning widely, pushing thoughts of strange (pretty) blind men to the back of his head, determined to get through the rest of the weekend with his sanity intact. He shucks off his shoes and slacks and belt, tosses them messily on the loveseat and then circles back around in irritation to fold his slacks and tuck his shoes beneath the loveseat, belt rolled up. He unclips his suspenders and pulls off his shirt, folding it atop his his slacks and placing his belt and suspenders on top of them

He saves his shower for the morning, thinking that he’d probably fall asleep and fall if he tried taking one now, and after scrubbing his hands through the flames of his hair, he crawls under the plush, white hotel sheets, silky and smooth beneath his hands, cool and soft on his skin. It’s fairly easy to fall asleep despite the turmoil in his head. 

...

Sledge has odd dreams that night. 

Dreams that feel less like dreams and more like a strange prophecy, as if someone had taken vague fears and pieced them into a strange movie to play in his head.

_ The cemetery is rank with the stench of death, piles and piles of bodies of boys invading the space where there should be stone markers, the green of the grass replaced with the green of dirty uniforms, the silence hindered by the quiet dripping of blood to the earth. Sledge stands in the middle of the sea of bodies, his chest heaving with rapid breath. His hands are heavy with the weight of the gun he’s holding, the echo of spraying bullets roaring in his ears and making him deaf to nearly anything else.  _

_ Sidney-his friend Sidney’s face stares at him in every direction he looks, body twisted into some incoherent form, his eyes pallid with death rather than the vibrant blue Sledge had always admired, blond curls matted in clumps of dirt and blood, streaks of it marring the prominent bone of his cheeks. There’s worms everywhere, crawling, vile silver things squirming in the dirt, in Sidney’s mouth, hollowing flesh and rendering them all to pitted meat. The sky rumbles its displeasure with the state of the earth, but does not shed its tears, its gray-blue face flashing with hairline fractures of lightning, and Sledge shivers as the fog collects around him, throwing the rotted corpses around him into silhouette.  _

_ "A pity", says Merriell, who appears as if conjured by the mist, his eyes matching the silver of it. He's dressed in green fatigues, a heavy gun slung on one of his skinny shoulders, his helmet hanging loosely on his head. He takes a cigarette from the pocket of a nearby body, unbothered by the worms or the rot and lights it with a snap of his fingers.  _

_ Sledge stares at him, this strange apparition, but Merriell pays him little mind though he couldn't possibly be talking to anyone else. _

_ "Can't be helped, soldier boy. War demands its payment in blood." _

_ “What?” Sledge rasps, his breathing go fast and harsh, eyes feeling like they might just bulge out of his skull. Merriell looks at him as if he’s surprised to see him here, and Sledge startles when he realizes that Merriell can  _ see  _ him, his eyes making direct contact with him, taking him in rather than directing his gaze at him without actually absorbing anything.  _

_ “Hmm”, he hums, furrowing his brows. “You’re here. I thought for sure…” _

_ He doesn’t pick the thought back up after it trails off, taking a drag from his pilfered cigarette and blowing silvery smoke from his mouth, whisps curling their reaching fingers into the mist surrounding them.  _

_ “Merriell”, Sledge snaps, focussing his eyes on the other man rather than forcing himself to look at the battlefield around him, though even in his peripheral he can see the stains of gore and viscera, haunted twisted faces looking on him with agony and accusation, and for a second, Sledge thinks he can hear their voices calling out, chanting his name and demanding something he doesn’t understand.  _

_ It’s in French, he realizes, their stiff jaws butchering the words into mince, grinding them down on their yellow teeth until the french is gargled and broken and beyond incomprehensible.  _

_ His feet squelch in the grass and he doesn’t have to look down to know that it's all the blood that the grass has drunk, sinking into the muddy earth in shades of rusted red and festered brown and his stomach gurgles in agitation at the thought, at the smell of rot that permeates from the very core of the earth.  _

_ "Just wake up, Eugene. You don't belong here", Merriell says, and Eugene gapes at him, his shoulders shaking and his mind cracking as he tries to make sense of it all.  _

_ "Just tell me what the hell's goin on", Eugene pleads, horror climbing his throat like bile as worms trickle out the ear and dig their way through his boots, into his skin. His breath hitches, heart beating too fast. _

_ Merriel looks impassive. In fact, he's fading back into the fog, a wispy figure with blurred edges and distant eyes and Eugene doesn't want to be alone here on this nightmare where his best friend from Alabama accuses him with his vacant eyes.  _

_ … _

Sledge shoots up in bed, breathing heavily and sweating profusely, his sheets drenched despite the air conditioner rattling along beneath his window, blowing cool air into the room to combat the humidity. His heart hammers against his ribs and he raises his hand to press his palm against his chest, afraid that if he doesn't do something to keep it in, his heart may well beat its way out onto his bed to stain the sheets of his bed.

He scrambles out of bed, desperately trying to capture enough air to fill his lungs again, and he stumbles dizzily into the bathroom, bumping against the door frame and supporting his weight on the sink, heaving into the basin until he can gather the strength to open the faucet, swiping cool water over his overheated skin. He’ll take a shower in a moment, he just. Needs to calm down. 

God, he thinks as his breathing calms and he looks up into the mirror above the sink. His eyes look bloodshot and his skin looks ashen and sickly. He wonders just how much sleep he actually got because he feels as if he’s slept through an eternity and got maybe an hour’s worth of rest. When he goes back into his room to strip his sheets and pick up clothes for his shower, debating between cool water to fight off the heat or warm water to relax his tense, sore muscles he glances at the clock on on the bedside table and pauses when he finds that it’s only nine in the morning. A quick peek into the window, past the heavy curtains, he finds that the sun has risen, but still hangs low in the sky, not quite reaching its peak, they sky the pale, pastel blue of early morning, soft wispy clouds weaving in and out as if sewn into blue fabric. 

The images of his dream linger behind his closed eyelids as Sledge showers, and even as faded recollections that become fainter in his memories as the morning drags on, Sledge feels the strain of his mind as it tries to wrap itself around what it had seen last night, death and festing rot wrapping around his throat like a threat, Merriell’s presence like that of a crow, an omen that makes the hair on the back of Sledge’s neck prickle and rise. And Sledge isn’t a superstitious person- he’s a church going and god-fearing man who grew up on stories of miracles and resurrection, but he doesn’t think he’s ever believed in things like ghosts or psychics or magic, found those sort of things too silly and improbable to make note of. 

Meeting Merriell makes him almost reconsider. 

His stomach feels squirmy, so Sledge decides to go on a walk before he eats breakfast, hoping that fresh air might ease the final images of his dream from his mind and give him peace of mind. The space behind his eyes pulses, but it’s not blown into a full head ache yet, so he drinks a glass of water from the tap and heads out, relieved by the stiff wind that cuts through the morning’s heat. 

Sledge only plans on walking around the corner and finding a little cafe to get breakfast at the cozy little place not far off from his hotel, but he keeps going until the sun has climbed up to its highest point and the thick humidity swallows whatever relief the breeze offers, sweat tingling on the back of his neck and his belly rumbling in irritation, trying to remind him that he’s entirely missed breakfast and didn’t bother to have dinner the other night. 

He doesn’t deviate from his path, though. Instead, he finds himself in a park, oddly empty for a weekend where he’d expect it to be bustling with people and their children. To see it so barren makes something crawl up his spine, the dragging fingers of the willow trees reaching out for him, and Sledge is vividly reminded of Sid in his dream, empty-eyed, hand extended as if begging for help that Sledge could not have given. He moves along until he finds himself on an arching stone bridge, overlooking a section of bayou and surrounded by towering oaks, his reflecting glancing back at him through the rippling water as if through a distorted sepia filter, off kilter and lost and still exhausted. The stone is damp beneath his fingers, smelling old and musty, patches of moss growing along the gray, rough hewn rock in blinding shades of jade and emerald. 

Sledge tears himself away, determined to find a restaurant and get some goddamn food, then head back to his hotel and find a book or see if the television had anything good on. 

Except that, when he turns, finds Merriell (he should ask for his last, he thinks) idly trailing through the tall green grass, a little too close to the water’s edge for comfort. There’s a cane in his hand, white and looped around his wrist, dark sunglasses perched on his nose. Sledge is tempted to turn the fuck around and head the other way, but as if sensing him, Merriell, pivots toward him, mouth pulling into something quandious, not quite a smile, but not a frown either. 

They stare each other down (or rather, Sledge stares Merriell down while Merriell’s gaze is directed somewhere at his chest), Merriell’s cane tapping the side of Sledge’s shoe before coming to a stop. There’s a tense silence that stretches between them, and Sledge is tempted to ask Merriell what the hell is going on in the hopes that he might get an actual answer this time. He doesn’t even get to open his mouth before Merriell grins, and says, 

“Why don’tcha take me to dinner, cher?”

…

“Can you read minds?” Sledge asks a little over a half hour later, in a restaurant that he’s sure isn’t anywhere near his hotel. The food is good though, and while Sledge wouldn’t have minded paying for a more expensive lunch, it doesn’t hurt that it’s relatively cheap. It must be the advantage of living (Sledge assumes that Merriell grew up in Louisiana) here, knowing where all the best restaurants are. It makes his heart ache for Mobile. 

“No”, Merriell snorts, “don’t be stupid.”

“You ever answer questions?” Sledge grumbles, his irritation spiking

“If they’re not borin’. C’mon Eugene, sure you’ve got more interestin’ things on your mind?”

Sledge scowls at the little cat-like curve of Merriell’s smile,  _ knowing _ he’s being intentionally antagonized but being too tired to resist rising to the bait, fingers curling into fists before he forces himself to relax and looking down at the grilled fish on his plate, it’s empty eyes meeting his. He looks away, shifting his gaze back to Merriell and finds himself thinking that he was wrong, the other day, when he’d thought to himself that Merriell fit into his surroundings like a puzzle piece, part of a set. He doesn’t quite fit in here, in the soft gray-brown shadows of the restaurant, the faint dust motes caught in the pale light that drips onto the table through the window only serving to make him look just a little more  _ other _ . 

He certainly belongs in the black-green-silver-golds of the bayou, he hadn’t been wrong about that, but here, in the chattering corner of the public, he doesn’t seem completely corporeal, as if he could fade in the subtlest shift of the light. 

Merriell’s like the mist that had appeared in his dream the other night. 

“What’s your last name?” 

Merriell’s sunglasses are set to the side, so Sledge can see when he blinks, a little surprised.    
  
“Shelton.”

_ Shelton.  _

The name melts on his tongue, rolling a little clumsily against his Alabaman accent, but Sledge likes the sound of it. It strikes him again Merriell’s eyes are the same green as those that had flashed in his mind when he’d first shown up on his doorstep the day before. 

“Do you know why-”

“No”, Merriell interrupts before he can finish the thought. “I’m as confused as you. But… If we were meant to meet, no harm in gettin’ to know each other. Least it can do is buy me some entertainment.”

Sledge scoffs, but he finds it comforting to know that Merriell is just as in the dark as he is, over their strange shared dream and whatever it is that keeps drawing him to the other man. Well, maybe Merriell knows more than he’s letting on, or he’s lying and not telling Sledge everything, but he seems to be just as confused as he is, and as the afternoon wears on… he finds he enjoys the company more than he’d anticipated. Merriell is crude in the same breath that he’s witty, the bitter sting of his barbed comments soothed by the teasing twinkle of his eyes, and Sledge engages him as if they’re words are swords and they’re in the middle of a fast-paced spar. 

“I know the way back to my hotel”, Sledge insists as their lunch draws to a cose, stepping out of the restaurant with his arm looped around Merriell’s. He has his dark sunglasses on again, the sun hitting the glass and making them impossible to look at. 

“You wouldn’t know your way out of a paper bag”, says Merriell, tap, tap, tapping his cane as he guides the way through alleys and winding paths that are too shadowed even in the day time, cool in a way that makes Eugene uncomfortable, sure that the gray cement and graffitied walls are hiding something insidious from though there’s no evidence for it. 

He’s not sure how they make it all the way back to his hotel without getting lost (or possibly, Merriell had gotten lost and just neglected to tell him until he’d gotten back on track.)

“You could come up to my room with me?” Sledge offers, but once again, when he looks back, Merriell is gone. 

…

There’s something lacking, Sledge finds, about not having Merriell around. It’s like he’s gone and sucked the life out of his surroundings just by disappearing, too much like watercolor in a world made of acrylic. The thought of him sticks to Sledge’s mind like gum, and no matter how much he tries to pick him out, he leaves residual pieces that he can’t quite scrape off- the curve of his smile, the warm flush of his cheeks. 

Sledge shakes his head, chest heaving with the force of his breath. 

He considers visiting his father and his sick friend, realizes that he never asked for an address, and goes to pick out a book from his travel bag instead. He curls up on the armchair in the corner of the room, the comforter from his bed (newly made, the sheets replaced by the time he’d gotten back) wrapped around his shoulders, still fresh enough to be cool despite the sticky heat that permeates despite the air conditioner. 

As he reads, the shadows of the room crawl forward as the sun begins to descend, lengthening until they’ve become distorted versions of what they originally were. 

Sledge falls asleep before it becomes too dark to read, the book held limply in his hands and his neck twisted awkwardly to the side. 

... 

_ When he blinks, he is at dinner with his family, but it does not have any of the familiarity of it, his mother blank and quiet as she scrapes her knife into a gray, overly sweet smelling steak, the blunt blade slicing through a collection of silver worms that had made their home there.  _

_ There is a twitching hand in his father’s plate, pale fingers spasming as he drags his scalpel,  _ scalpel,  _ into the palm, opening it up to display veins and tendons and bone, his eyes distant as he scrapes away a bit of skin and Eugene looks away, his throat thick with bile, disgust rising in the pit of his stomach. Looking into his brother’s eyes is like looking into a wax figure, empty and cold, the facsimile of a smile playing on his crooked mouth and he says, quietly, like it’s a joke between them,  _

_ “The war killed me, Gene. It’s gonna kill you too. It’s gonna pit you of all the good things that make you up and replace them with worms and rot and ugly things, hatred and bitterness and it’s going to take every ounce of love you’ve ever known.” _

_ Sledge swallows, and looks away. He doesn’t know what war Eddy’s talking about, it doesn’t make sense, and his stomach roils at the scenery of his home, the wood turned rotten and squirming with termites, the food crawling with worms and maggots, but Sledge can’t leave, feels like he’s stuck to his seat.  _

_ “Fancy place you got here”, Merriell says, rolled in with the mist that had begun to drift in through the open door, a cigarette rolling between his fingers, eyes taking in Sledge’s pallid features and the sickening rot that’s itched its way under his skin. He’s dressed up, slender figure accentuated by the cinched waist of his red suit, curls carefully styled into elegant waves. There’s a splash of scarlet on his cheek, as if he’d been artfully splashed with blood.  _

_ “Don’t look too glum, it’s just a dream”, he adds, the corners of his mouth ticking up.  _

_ “What does it mean?” Sledge asks, exhausted from not knowing, frustrated from the lack of answers. Merriell shrugs, wisps of smoke drifting from his nose like a sort of dragon, expression twisting a little as he tries to interpret what he’s seeing.  _

_ “I don’t have a goddamn clue”, he admits, “but I wish it weren’t so fuckin’ gross.” _

_ Despite himself, Sledge laughs, high pitched and croaky, and Merriell chuckles along with him, though there’s a something in his eyes that tells Sledge that hes just as unnerved by the lack of information as he is, and there’s a comfort in that this strange man, who Sledge isn’t even half sure is real, is just as fucking confused as he is.  _

_ “We.. could meet up. Outside the dream, to discuss it?” Sledge suggests. Merriell raises an eyebrow at him.  _

_ “What is there to discuss? Your life’s been infested with the corruption, the living rot, which is about all I can interpret here.” _

_ “Well then… We could just meet up.” _

_ Merriell smiles, and it’s the only thing that keeps Sledge sane, this conversation as beside him, his brother takes his knife into his own wrist, saws and saws until the wound seeps with old blood, little brown beetles, the ones not cut open with the knife, skitter onto the table, and there’s more shuddering out of his mouth- _

_ He looks away, back to Merriell’s smile, and his pale green eyes.  _

_ “The park. I’ll see you at the park.” _

_ The mist drifts back, and takes Merriell with it, leaving his afterimage, and Sledge looks at that, looks at anything other than the hollow versions of his parents until he finally wakes up.  _

_ … _

Sledge regrets waking up. The pain in his neck is insufferable, and with every move he makes to crawl off the armchair, he feels his bone pop and crackle, his body groaning in protest at the very idea of getting up. The only silver lining is that at least he didn’t sweat through his sheets this time, though his clothes had to suffer for it. Stretching is both an agony and a relief, and with a tired huff, he goes to take his shower. 

Somehow, he doesn’t get lost on his way to the park. He’d been worried about that, because as much as he’d told Merriell that he was fine on his own, he couldn’t deny that New Orleans seemed to disorient and twist him around, paths that should have been clearly marked leading him astray and in circles and to entirely unfamiliar places altogether, as if the city itself was toying with him. 

It’s cloudy again, though not as much as it had been the first day, gray cotton clouds interspersed with patches of blue sky, occasionally even letting the sun peek through in large swathes of golden light. The humidity feels awful, but the wind that whistles through the oaks is substantial enough that it cuts through the worst of it, and Sledge is even a little regretful that he hadn’t thought to pack a light sweater. 

He finds Merriell on a park bench, feeding a surrounding crowd of black birds pieces of bread, his glasses perched on the space beside him, next to his folded cane. He doesn’t stick out so much here, in his thin blue coat and washed out jeans, and Sledge would even think that he’d fit right into the environment if his gut didn’t tell him that the picture seemed off, colors not quite matching. Merriell’s puzzle only seemed to encompass his bayou on the outskirts, and Sledge wonders if Merriell ever feels as much of an outsider as he does. 

“You gonna sit down, or just stare at me all day? I’d do the same, but I can’t actually see you”, Merriell teases. Sledge flushes, too caught up in his thoughts to have realized that he’d been staring for so long. 

Merriell moves his glasses and cane so Sledge can sit, and he accepts the bread he’s handed, sprinkling it into the grass to watch the birds snatch it up. One of them looks up at him, beady black eyes regarding him with suspicion before pecking at his leg and fluttering away before it can be attacked. Sledge flinches, cursing and nursing at the bit of skin not quite covered by sock or jeans. 

“That one’s a little bastard”, Merriell laughs, having heard Sledge’s yelp and knowing exactly what had happened. 

“Does it get it from you?” Sledge grumbles, and Merriell bumps their shoulders in retaliation.

They sit in silence, and Sledge finds that he doesn’t much mind it, finds himself thinking that at least he’s not completely alone in a strange city he doesn’t know, surrounded by complete strangers. Merriell’s an odd companion, certainly, but the more time he spends with him, the more he doesn’t mind. Merriell feels… right. Merriell feels as if he’d been made to sit beside Sledge on a park bench, and Sledge doesn’t know how he had never noticed how off kilter the world had been without it, missing a piece of itself until Sledge found it, and now he’s twisting it this way and that, trying to figure out how to get it to fit. 

“I think I was led to you”, Sledge says without preamble. The words slide from his tongue as if they’d been there all along, waiting for their turn to be spoken. 

“I agree. I don’t know why, but… I don’t mind it, I think. You’re not the annoying little rich boy I thought you’d be.”

They both chuckle, and something settles in Sledge’s chest, warm and vibrant that dissipates the initial feeling of  _ wrongness  _ he’d felt upon entering the city.

They go out to eat again, and Sledge wonders if he’s desensitized or if he just has a stronger stomach than he realized when he finds himself able to entertain the thought of food after his last two dreams. Merrniell certainly doesn't have a problem eating, and Sledge envies the ease with which he handles everything, from vivid, apocalyptic dreams to navigating his way through the maze of New Orleans.

When the day begins to fade, Sledge realizes that he’s spent the entirety of it with Merriell, drifting from shop to shop, arms looped as they walk the winding streets and talking about… nothing. Everything, maybe. 

Somehow, he’d ended up spilling his entire history to him, had stumbled into the promise of letting him meet his dog someday, had found comfort in the lack of judgement that rested in Merriell’s eyes. He still doesn’t know anything about Merriell, and he wonders if all days feel like life times in New Orleans. 

When Sledge gets back to his hotel room, he picks up his journal and begins to write.

…

_ Merriell sits idly while the crows peck at his eyes, a trail of red tears staining his cheeks.  _

_ “Bad dream?” he asks sympathetically, twirling a shiny black feather between his fingers. The grass he sits on looks a strange, dead sort of green, too much water having turned it into wet mush, but Merriell doesn’t seem any more bothered by the grass than he is by the crows.  _

_ “What’s goin on, why’s this happening”, Sledge pleads, shooing off the crows with the mad desperation of a man running from an incensed goose, or in this case, mad dreams. They caw and flee, raining down more of their iridescent feathers and painting the drowned grass black. He doesn’t want a third dream. He doesn’t want these dreams to keep sapping away at his sanity, eating at pieces of him until he’s just as twisted as visions that he’s shown. He wants to fucking sleep.  _

_ “The powers sought you out”, Merriell answers, blinking his empty sockets, frowning when it only causes more blood to ooze out and then closing them entirely in resignation. “You’re being tested.” _

_ “How? For what?” Sledge asks, frustrated, his head aching and his heart thrumming against his ribs, an angry bird rattling its cage. None of this makes sense, he can’t make heads or tales of any of it and Merriell’s refusal to be any clearer wears at his considerable patience.  _

_ “I don’t know. I’m being tested too, but receiving clear answers from here is like tryin to teach a toddler algebra.” He scrunches his face. “It’s like trying to teach  _ me _ algebra.” _

_ Merriell’s eyelids slide up to reveal his piercing eyes, ice chips glinting like flint in firelight and Sledge swallows heavily, his breath catching in his throat. For a moment, it’s like Merriell can see him, through him, into him, his eyes scorching the fabric of his soul. And when Sledge blinks, Merriell is gone.  _

_ … _

Merriell opens his eyes, and is met with familiar darkness. 

Well, he thinks, having his eyesight back for a few moments in a dream is better than nothing. It’s strange, knowing what someone looks like, but being unable to really imagine that version of them when he’s talking to them outside of a dream, know that what he saw is version of them who’d been pale as death and drenched in blood and the stink of fear, and even that didn’t take away from Eugene’s handsome, freckled face, the faint breeze whipping his red hair into the flicker of candle flame. 

The faint titter of birds informs him that it’s dawn or close to it, and he can still faintly remember the peaking red and pink of morning light as it spilled into black ink of the night, the stars melting away as the sun chased the moon into the horizon. His grandmother would call his reminiscing childish and his mother would call it indulgent, but they never seemed to understand that connecting to his surroundings, his memories helps him connect to his magic in a way that their blindness did not. 

_ Your sight distracts,  _ his grandmother scolds in his head. He remembers her faintly, the wrinkles carved into her brown face, the cloudy sheen of her pale gray eyes, the way her mouth seemed to be tilted in a permanent frown. She had been blinded by her mother, had blinded her daughter and had watched on impassively as Merriel was blinded by his mother. 

_ The cost of strong magic _ , his mother had apologized, and Merriel remembers her too, how her dark curls tumbled over her shoulder, her large, hooded blue-green eyes. He doesn’t know what his father had looked like and he wonders if he has anything of him in his appearance, though years of “ _ you look the spittin’ image of your maman _ ”’s have more than assured him that he probably doesn’t. Fair enough, he hadn’t known his grandfather either, nor his great great grandmother, though he had briefly met his great great grandfather. 

Merriell pauses, takes a sip of the coffee that he’d been making while lost in his thoughts, and finds that it tastes like absolute shit. He chokes it out and frowns, wishing his magic could be useful and summon sugar, but it can’t, so he resigns himself to flavoring it with milk, grimacing when he smells the incoming spoiling of it. Curse him for forgetting to buy more when he’d gone out, too distracted by Eugene’s intoxicating presence, something so fresh about it, even with the faintest trace of the corruption on him. Even blind, he seemed to have an affinity for pretty boys. 

As the day wears on, he feels the heat of the sun thicken through the windows, the kind of heat that hungers for the dry frailty of grass and finds none of it in the bayou, making due instead with a joining of the water and becoming a thick, soupy humidity that makes the mosquitoes outside go wild. Merriell wishes that being a blind swamp witch wasn’t so damn  _ boring _ and he wonders how long it’ll take for that boy to come back, to either beg for answers that Merriell doesn’t have or give it up and go slinking back to whatever place smells so sweetly of flowers and the more delicate sort of rain. 

_ Alabama _ , his mind provides. 

_ Shut up _ , Merriel tells it. 

And his day drags on, with only his magic for company. 

…

Sledge awakens feeling like his insides are crawling with insects, the feeling of soft dirt clinging to his hands and it takes a thorough check of himself in the hotel bathroom to reassure him that he’s not, in fact, covered in a slathering of gore and filth, though he can feel the tacky touch of it layered on his skin. The mirror reflects his exhaustion at him, his eyes seeming like sunken hunks of dark coal, the bags beneath them a sickly grayish-purple.    
  


He looks nearly as bad as the people he killed in his first dream, and the thought makes him shudder, conjuring the torn apart bodies of countless men in his head, enough to turn the crystal waters of a beach into a cloudy red sea, the screams echoing in his ears piercing and terribly scared. 

Sledge thinks back on his dream as he makes himself coffee, mindlessly pouring sugar into it until it’s almost too sweet to drink and curses himself for his inattention. 

He never asked for this. He doesn’t know what the “powers” are or why they chose him or why they led him to Merriell. Sledge almost thinks that he doesn’t want to know because from what he’s seen, from the dreams (visions?) he’s had, they may well lead to his ruination, to a desolation beyond his comprehension. He almost wishes that he hadn’t come. What was the point anyway, when he’d not even met his father’s friend, when they’d only be here three days and then leave this place behind?

He could do that, he thinks. Just leave. He could forget all of this and live the rest of his life as if he’d never encountered Merriell or the “powers” and go home and be  _ normal _ . Even if the dreams follow him, he could ignore them, and eventually, he reasons, they’d leave him alone and he could put this all behind him.

Sledge thinks of Merriell, and his smile, feeding the birds and having lunch together.  _ Fuck _ , he thinks, exasperated with himself. 

His father gets back to the hotel as he’s getting dressed, and he looks tired and drawn. Sledge slows down enough to have breakfast with him, though his leg bounces through the entirety of it and nerves lick at him like flames, urging him to  _ go go go  _ before he runs out of time. His father takes the news that he’ll be staying in Louisiana for a little longer better than he’d expected- confused, but not particularly surprised. 

…

The swamp feels somehow more suffocating than the first day he’d been there. It looks just as drowned and hungry in the daylight as it did in the evening, and even with sky above being blue, it seems the kind of blue that watches on impassively as you bled out to death in the soggy grass. It reminds him of Merriel’s eyes. 

Merriel, who opens the door before he knocks and ushers him inside where the air is slightly less choking. 

“So what do you think?” Merriell asks him when they’re both settled in the tiny living room, the musk of earth permeating the air, the fabric of the couch he sits on faded and worn, little holes littering the armrests like a cat had kneaded it with its claws. He hadn't noticed any of that, before. Merriell sits across from him, his legs pulled up onto his seat, a cigarette in his hand that trails wispy trails of smoke every time he brings it to his lips. 

Sledge shrugs. 

Merriell stares, his pale eyes caught on the wall just an inch to the right of Sledge’s face. 

Sledge coughs, his face burning, and says, “I’m not sure. It- well I know it’s not going be to be easy, but I’m not sure if- if-”

The doubt slithers in again, and Merriell looks disappointed.

“Oh, but you  _ have  _ to be sure”, Merriell tuts, hopping to his feet, his steps soundless on the dark wooden floor. He strides over to where Sledge sits, looming over him where he stands, a strange, willowy figure that Sledge still doesn’t know how to interpret. Strong or fragile? Beautiful or grotesque? All of them at once?

Merriell lifts his hands up, pausing, his face a curious question that Sledge interprets as  _ can I _ ? Slowly, Sledge curls his hands around Merriell’s bony wrists, the feeling of fine bone under thin skin odd beneath the pads of his fingers, and brings them to his face. Merriell’s hands are cold, tracing down his cheeks and curling along his jaw and Sledge still hasn’t let go of his wrists, his heart skittering in his chest and really, it’s a miracle he hasn’t died from his erratic heartbeat yet with the way Merriell makes his insides twist up. 

Up close, his breath smells of mint and Sledge finds himself caught on the little spatterings of freckles in the corner of Merriell’s eyes. The fine hairs on his arms prickle with an odd electrical charge and his breath catches his throat as he feels himself fall away, drowning in the blue-green of Merriell’s eyes, lost to their swirling depths. 

He does not know what information Merriell may have gleaned from his head, but he spies the twitch of a smile on the corner of his lip, and Sledge doesn’t know what it means, but it makes his chest swell and he thinks, he thinks maybe he could go to war if it meant coming back to this smile. 

“You have a strong, pure soul”, says Merriell, his voice lowering into a rasp, eyelids hanging low so that only a sliver of his pale eyes can be seen. He doesn’t quite sound like Merriell anymore. 

“You have such anger, and righteousness and even some arrogance”, he continues, his voice overlaid with others, echoing and distorted, like Sledge is in a chamber with a number of speaking people, “but you are good. Going to war is not an easy task, not for someone like you, but it would not break you. It’s why the powers chose you”

It’s only after Merriell blinks and it dissipates that Sledge realizes that there had been something like a presence in the room, a cloying and heavy thing that had held Merriell as its puppet and Sledge as an examination. When Merriell steps back, he takes his hands with him(and Sledge finds that he misses the warmth of them). 

“Well, Eugene?” Merriell asks, his voice sounding empty with the lack of layered distortion from the other voices. 

And Sledge thinks, looking into Merriell’s eyes, anchoring and solid, yeah, this might be what he came for

**Author's Note:**

> I hope u enjoyed that


End file.
